


Out of the Wind, In From the Cold

by Ostentenacity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Now with a second chapter!, Post-MAG159, Scottish Honeymoon Era, TMAHCWeek 2020, There Were Two Beds Actually :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:02:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26128477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostentenacity/pseuds/Ostentenacity
Summary: There are two bedrooms in the safehouse, and two beds.For a moment, Jon considers asking to share, but decides against it with a wince. “I reallylovedyou,” Martin had told him. Loved. Past tense. And Martin doesn’t exactly have a lot of choices right now in terms of company; it would be cruel to demand he play at feelings he no longer has just to make Jon happy.(For a moment, Martin considers asking to share. But he dismisses the idea with a shake of his head. Jon has already done so much for him. Martin isn’t about to ask formore,especially not when it’s something he doesn’t really need. He has his right mind back, and he has Jon’s friendship. That should be enough for him. It’llhaveto be.)---Jon thinks that Martin doesn’t love him. Martin thinks that Jon doesn’t lovehim.They do not, of course, discuss this. Unrequited love is already awkward enough, right? No need to dwell on it.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 225
Kudos: 858





	1. Out of the Wind, In from the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Magnus Archives Hurt/Comfort Week, day 3, with the prompt: Misunderstanding.
> 
> Thank you to [Bloodsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloodsbane) and [Marianne_Dashwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marianne_Dashwood) for beta reading!
> 
> Me: I’ve already done four cottage fics, I _don’t_ need to do another one!!!  
> Also me: haha but what if there isn’t conveniently only one bed and also jon got to be the really sad one this time
> 
> Content warnings at the end.

There are two bedrooms in the safehouse, and two beds. 

For a moment, Jon considers asking to share, but decides against it with a wince. “I really _loved_ you,” Martin had told him. Loved. Past tense. And Martin doesn’t exactly have a lot of choices right now in terms of company; it would be cruel to demand he play at feelings he no longer has just to make Jon happy. 

* * *

For a moment, Martin considers asking to share. But he dismisses the idea with a shake of his head. Jon has already done so much for him. Martin isn’t about to ask for _more,_ especially not when it’s something he doesn’t really need. He has his right mind back, and he has Jon’s friendship. That should be enough for him. It’ll _have_ to be.

* * *

And so it goes.

* * *

Jon wouldn’t call himself a romantic. Whether or not he _is_ one despite that is—well, neither here nor there, really, since it’s not like he’s in the habit of analyzing his own softer feelings (when they crop up) even for his own benefit, much less anyone else’s. But he has read his fair share of period romances, and enjoyed them enough that some bits stuck with him even years later. The point is, the significance of the fact that he’s running off to Scotland with a man he’s madly in love with is not lost on him.

 _(Actually, that particular historical tidbit was only relevant for people under the age of twenty-one, when it was relevant at all,_ pipes up the helpful corner of his brain which got him labeled first a prodigy and later a pedant. Recently it’s taken to supplying information he’s not sure he ever knew in the first place. Like now. _There were actually a number of villages where elopements were common, not just Gretna Green—)_

Jon groans, stands up from the sofa, and begins pacing the length of the small cabin, casting about for a distraction. He wishes Martin would come back from his walk. 

It wouldn’t help with the main problem, of course. Jon is keenly aware that the moment Martin gets back, he’ll go from wishing Martin was in the cabin to wishing he was in the same room, and then to wishing he was in the same half of the room, and then to wishing he was on the same half of the raggedy sofa, and so on. It never ends. 

Sometimes, Jon wonders what it would take to satiate the yawning, aching hunger that has made a home for itself just underneath his skin. Maybe, if he spends enough time trying to appease it, it will—not go away, he supposes. Hurt less? 

But it would be the work of years for Jon to deserve that much attention, to earn that many smiles, that many casual touches. And while Jon can’t conceive of a better way to spend—well, the rest of his life, honestly—he also can’t imagine that Martin will put up with him for that long. It’s probably _really_ awkward for him. Here they are, playing house together: Martin, and the man who loves him so dearly that he was able to rescue them both from a dimension of eternal loneliness, despite the fact that Martin doesn’t love him back anymore.

Jon sighs and leans his forehead against the front door. He wishes he was strong enough to give Martin more space, to repay his kindness with something other than starved greed. But even after everything, Martin is still so kind, so _warm,_ and Jon has been out in the cold so very long, and thinking about being parted from this last comfort—the one good thing left in his whole life—makes Jon feel like he’s dying. So he carefully rations the affection he’s offered, and counts his lucky stars over and over that Martin isn’t sick of him yet.

* * *

Martin dithers at the fork in the road. He knows which way he wants to go: he _wants_ to turn down the narrow dirt track that leads back home—that leads back to the _cabin,_ the cabin, he has to remember, it’s not his home—but that’s exactly why he should continue on, delay returning by another half hour or so. 

Jon won’t say anything, of course, won’t criticize, won’t scold. He might even put on a smile when Martin opens the door, or ask solicitously how his walk was. But Martin can tell it’s a front. He’s seen the careful distance Jon always puts between them; he’s _felt_ that distance every time Jon touches him, so reluctantly, so lightly, that Martin could almost mistake him for a ghost. Which is funny, really, in a sad kind of way, because out of the two of them, the one who’s more likely to actually become a ghost is—

Martin groans and shakes his head, as if to dislodge the thought from the inside of his skull. He’s not going to give in to the Lonely again, not _ever._ He can remember with sickening clarity how it felt to look at Jon and feel nothing at all, and he’d rather not repeat the experience, thanks. It doesn’t matter that nothing will ever come of it. His feelings for Jon are _his._ If they change over time, wax or wane or turn into something entirely new, then so be it, but nothing and no one can _steal_ them from him again.

He’ll walk to the old fencepost about a quarter mile down the road and then head back, he decides. Hopefully Jon will have had enough of a break from him by then that he’ll be able to stand the clinging and the doting and the generally overbearing nature for another day. And so Martin will be able to stay close to him.

And if it hurts sometimes, that Jon is never going to want him back, well… it doesn’t matter, does it? The important thing is that _Martin_ cares about _him._ The rest is—superfluous. And besides, Martin has plenty of practice at not getting what he wants. He’s an old hand at it by now.

* * *

Jon wonders, sometimes, if Martin will ever fall in love again, with somebody else. He hopes he will.

No, really, he tells himself. He does. Back when they’d been—friends, he supposes, proper friends, friends who got lunch together and talked about everything and nothing in between working, back before everything had gotten messed up entirely beyond repair—Martin had seemed so lively, so happy to spend time with him. Jon had chalked it up to his general pleasant, friendly nature at the time. But knowing what he does now, well…

He knows both of them well enough to realize that Martin must be the sort of person to enjoy being in love. The poetry, the eagerness to spend time together, the patience it must have taken to sit through Jon making an ass of himself at every possible opportunity… he must have thought it was all worth it, somehow. And Jon knows he himself is no prize. So it must have been the feeling itself that he’d really liked.

Martin deserves this, Jon tells himself sternly. He deserves every good thing in the world. Jon loves him, and wants him to be happy, no matter what form that happiness takes; ergo, he wants Martin to fall in love with someone who will not treat him like absolute garbage for the first year of their acquaintance and then proceed to take him for granted right up until he’s not there anymore. And then Jon can move in next door and live by himself (with maybe a cat or two, but definitely not another person, he’d just resent them for not being Martin and that wouldn’t be fair to anyone); they can be friends and visit each other for lunch sometimes, and afterwards Martin will go back home to his husband who isn’t Jon and oh god, oh Christ, Jon is throwing the most pathetic pity party in human history. 

He attempts to banish the idea to the back of his mind where it can’t slip out and upset or embarrass him, but it keeps creeping back at odd moments. Martin will be holding something with his left hand, and Jon will imagine a glint of metal on his finger, and then have to go hide in another room until the white-hot jealousy fades enough for him to behave like a human being again.

(Jon realizes, of course, that he’s making more than a few assumptions here. That Martin would be interested in building a serious relationship with someone new; that he’d want to get married; that he’d choose to wear a ring. But as long as he’s already having self-pitying fantasies about someone else’s hypothetical future marriage, he might as well imagine it however he wants.)

Jon groans and rubs his eyes harder than he’d ever dared before he’d lost the ability to truly hurt himself. Stars burst across his vision, and he lets his head fall back against the wall with a low _thunk_ as he waits for them to fade. If he could just think about something, _anything,_ else—

“Jon?”

Oh no.

“Jon, I thought I heard—did you hit your head? Or—or maybe you just dropped something, sorry, I’ll just—” There’s a shuffling of feet from the other side of the door. “Can you just—let me know you’re all right, and then I’ll leave you alone, okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Jon. Or, rather, tries to say. His throat aches from holding back (pathetic, _pathetic)_ tears, so what actually comes out is a coughing fit.

He’s vaguely aware of more sound, and movement near him, but when he regains his breath, he’s surprised to see Martin kneeling on the floor beside him, face a mask of worry. “Are you all right?” asks Martin, before Jon has a chance to speak. “What happened?”

“I’m fine,” Jon croaks, rubbing at his aching ribs. Internally, he winces. It’s obvious that he’d been crying, and he can tell from the way the wrinkles on Martin’s brow deepen that Martin has noticed. “I just—I needed a minute. I didn’t hurt my head, I promise.”

“Are you _sure?”_ asks Martin, but he shakes his head before Jon can answer. “No, sorry, I don’t mean to fuss, I just—it was loud, that’s all. Do you—I could get you a glass of water?”

A prickle of heat creeps up Jon’s cheeks, and with it comes a rush of gratitude that Martin isn’t asking what he was crying over. “I’ll get one myself, but thank you,” he says, and attempts to push himself up off the floor. 

Unsuccessfully. His legs have gone to sleep. Martin catches him and helps him upright, and Jon leans greedily into his big, warm arms. He already hugged Martin twice this morning, so he shouldn’t _really_ be indulging again before lunchtime, but it’s always okay if Martin starts it. And—okay, maybe this wasn’t exactly intended as a hug at first, but Jon is only so strong, and it only lasts a few seconds, so it’s fine. 

Martin wraps an arm around Jon’s waist as they walk to the kitchen, which seems uncharacteristically affectionate, until Jon realizes Martin probably thinks he’s about to fall over without the support, and a thread of guilt curls up in the pit of his stomach. He pulls away as they cross the threshold, and fetches the water himself. 

Martin leans against the counter next to the sink. (Jon, as usual, wishes he were standing closer.) He doesn’t stare, but he does glance at Jon and then away a few times in rapid succession, hands twisting anxiously in front of his belly. “Did I… do something?” he asks eventually, in a small voice. “Say something?”

“What?”

Pink blooms across Martin’s cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. “It’s just—you left in sort of a hurry? Which is fine, of course!” he adds hastily, hands twisting faster. “I was just—is there something I could do, or, or _not_ do, so that you wouldn’t be upset? I don’t want to…” He opens and closes his mouth a few times. “I don’t want to upset you,” he finishes, the rosy color spreading down his neck.

“You didn’t upset me,” Jon hastens to tell him, as soon as he’s sure he won’t be interrupting. “It wasn’t anything you did, I promise.” It’s even mostly true. 

“Then—” Martin bites his lip. “Do you want to talk about—whatever it is? Maybe I can help?” Jon hesitates a moment too long, and Martin looks down, shoulders hunching. “Sorry. Never mind, I—”

“No!” says Jon, too loud. Martin flinches, and the guilt surges. “I—I would talk about it, it’s just…”

“None of my business,” Martin mumbles.

“I just don’t know if I can explain it,” says Jon, choosing his words slowly and carefully. “And it’s probably not something you could—it wouldn’t be fair to you, to ask you to fix what’s gotten into me.” The memory of Martin’s voice, distant and echoing, drifts through his mind, and he winces. “It’s my own damn fault anyway.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. And you’ll never know if I can help if you don’t ask me,” says Martin firmly, and then looks surprised at his own daring. Jon can’t help a little twitch of a smile, and Martin’s face relaxes in response. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, of course,” he continues. “But I—I’m here for you, you know? I don’t want you to feel like—like you have to hide when you’re upset.”

Warmth and more guilt chase each other through Jon’s veins. He wants—well, what he _really_ wants is for Martin to want _him._ To be assured that every day that passes doesn’t, in fact, bring him closer to the day that Martin will be looking at someone else, talking to someone else, hanging around the house doing nothing with someone else. But it would be unfair and preposterous to demand that Martin promise never to leave, never to find someone else he’d rather spend his life with. It wouldn’t be a fair demand even if Martin _were_ in love with him—Jon swallows hard, blinking a few times—and given that Jon’s feelings are so completely unrequited, it’s an unthinkable thing to ask.

“Thank you,” says Jon. “It’s very kind of you to offer. And I don’t—I don’t mean that sarcastically. You’re far more generous than I deserve.” 

“Jon—”

 _“But,”_ says Jon hastily, “I really—I couldn’t ask this of you. It wouldn’t—it’s not the sort of thing I could ask you to do.”

 _“Try_ me,” says Martin, followed immediately by, “No, sorry, I said I’d back off, sorry. Just—if you change your mind?”

“I know where to find you,” says Jon, with a faint chuckle.

Martin bites his lip, and then, cautiously, holds his arms out. Jon doesn’t waste a second before pitching forward into his chest. He doesn’t even have to feel guilty about this one.

* * *

The problem with trying to tell himself that his feelings for Jon are a good thing, Martin reflects, is that he’s working against a couple decades’ worth of calcified habit. Trying to get himself to believe that the little thrill that goes through him every time Jon says something funny, or smiles, or stands in a sunbeam with that one particular _look_ on his face, the one that makes him look dignified and academic (Martin does not have a type), or turns out to be surprisingly knowledgeable about some esoteric topic _(Martin does not have a type),_ or, best and worst of all, every rare occasion that he wraps his arms around Martin from the side and _sighs_ —

It’s hard to tell himself that that feeling is a good thing, when he’s so used to it being inconvenient at best and unwanted and/or inappropriate at worst. He’s been scolding himself for wasting time on crushes in general and his crush on Jon in particular for long enough that it’s become second nature. Now that said crush has turned into the actual love of his life—now that said love is what’s stopping him from dying (or, worse, turning into another Peter)—suddenly it’s a fight with himself every time he’s reminded of it. 

It would be easier, probably, if he could talk to Jon about it. If he could have Jon tell him that it’s okay, that he doesn’t mind, that it’s not wrong or bad for Martin to daydream, to dote. That he’s not hurting anything by spending time fantasizing instead of working. 

But he’s not about to ask. Jon has already done so much for him; Martin wouldn’t have been able to find his way out of the Lonely if Jon hadn’t reminded him how to want to escape. The very least Martin can do is take care of his unrequited feelings where Jon doesn’t have to be subjected to them.

And there he goes again. Where Jon doesn’t have to deal with the awkwardness inherent to their situation, Martin silently corrects himself. He can have his feelings all he likes; it’s bothering Jon that he can’t do.

Of course, it’s not always easy to tell what does and doesn’t count as bothering Jon. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Martin isn’t totally sure that he’s not the cause of whatever it is that makes Jon occasionally excuse himself to go have a cry alone in the smaller, dingier of the two bedrooms in the cottage, the one he insisted on taking over Martin’s protests that he should have the bigger one with the better mattress. (Martin also isn’t sure that Jon didn’t hurt himself, the time he’d heard a loud _thump_ through the thin walls. He hadn’t looked hurt, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, not with what Jon had told him about his uncanny ability to heal quickly from injuries.)

Martin wishes so dearly that he didn’t have to worry about coming on too strong. Sometimes it feels like he’s so in love that he could burst, that his body—large and unwieldy as it is—is too small to contain the full expanse of what he feels. He’s been trying to funnel that energy into regaining his old passion for poetry, with mixed results. Sometimes it helps to get his feelings down on paper. Sometimes the bubbly rush of excitement metamorphoses into frustration when the words just _won’t come._

Sometimes, the words come just fine, but he ends up melancholy, sick with longing to share his thoughts with something other than a sheet of paper. Paper’s not a very good listener. It never interrupts, but it also doesn’t _understand._

Once or twice, Martin tries to write something he could share with Jon. Most of what he’s been interested in writing of late has been romantic, verging on soppy, and is therefore out for _multiple_ reasons, but every now and then, he’s managed a halfway decent verse about something other than his haunted, lovely muse. However, while he used to be able to manage to write about more than just love, now nothing else ever seems to coalesce; everything eventually turns into an inconvenient metaphor. Rolling thunder becomes a deep voice. Deep water turns into dark eyes. Honey turns to sweetened breath which in turn becomes a kiss; the city of London becomes a man who never seems to sleep; the moon is a face, as scarred as it is beautiful. (Martin tears that last one up. It feels weird to write poetry about Jon’s scars without asking permission first.)

 _Everything reminds me of you,_ Martin writes. _The world is a mirror._ No. _The world is a broken mirror / It reflects you in a thousand different ways, but none as perfect / As the original._ Better. Maybe he can make something of it. 

_Not like it makes a difference, whether or not I can,_ he catches himself thinking, and groans, snapping his notebook shut. It doesn’t _matter_ whether or not he ever gets a chance to share his poetry, he tells himself sternly. It should be enough that it exists, that _he_ cared enough to write it down, no matter what anyone else thinks. (Or, rather, doesn’t think). He’s always written for himself and himself alone, so why—

His thoughts are interrupted by soft footsteps, and he turns to see Jon padding up behind him, looking concerned. Ah. “I’m fine,” says Martin, and gestures vaguely at his notebook. “Just—frustrated. It’s not as easy as it used to be.”

Jon’s face smooths out, but he doesn’t leave; instead, he drifts to the other side of the little round table and rests his hand on the back of the other chair. “Would it help to—to bounce ideas off someone else? I’d be happy to listen. That is, if you have anything you’d want to share?” 

He looks so nervous and shy that Martin almost agrees without paying attention to what he’s saying. Luckily, his brain hasn’t turned _completely_ to lovesick goo. “What, you’d listen to me recite my own poetry?” he asks. “My very amateur poetry? I don’t think that would be a pleasant experience for either of us.” He chuckles nervously.

Jon, to Martin’s flattered delight and sheer terror, remains serious. “I’d like it if you wrote it,” he says. “Did you know, the word _amateur_ comes from the Latin word for ‘lover’? As in, it’s something you do because you love it, not for material gain.” He glances up at Martin’s face, then away. “I’d be _honored_ if you wanted to share your amateur poetry.”

 _Oh god oh no what is Martin supposed to do with this—_ “But my pride, Jon,” he protests, trying to sound joking instead of actually concerned. “How am I going to compare with all the poets you read at _Oxford?”_

Jon scowls. “I wasn’t in—I didn’t _know_ any of them. I didn’t care what they had to say, but I care what _you_ do.” Then he sighs. “I don’t mean to pry. I just thought I’d offer, if you wanted to… if you wanted a more lively ear than…” He gestures weakly at the notebook.

Desperate for something to break the silence, Martin says, “It’s true, paper’s not a very good listener.” Then he winces, sure Jon won’t get it, that he’ll look totally blank, that he’ll ask Martin to explain the not-very-funny joke. But Jon laughs instead, his smile making little wrinkles form on the bridge of his nose, and the tension dissipates like oppressive summer heat before a breeze. “I’ve been trying to write something I could show to you,” says Martin, emboldened by his response. “Without feeling like I was embarrassing myself, I mean. I haven’t managed it yet, but… I’ll let you know?”

“Thank you,” says Jon softly. “I—I’m flattered, I— _thank_ you.” He looks at Martin with the sweetest smile Martin’s ever seen, and adds, “I’m excited to hear it,” apparently completely unaware of the sheer power of his own words and general presence. Martin sits there, dazed, as Jon drifts back into the other room.

Oh, god, he’s done it now. Now he _has_ to write something else or he’ll be _disappointing Jon._ He can’t show him the love poetry, for obvious reasons. What’s the least romantic thing he can think of?

Wait, no, bad idea, he can think of plenty of things that aren’t romantic and he doesn’t want to write poetry about _any_ of them, especially not poetry he’s going to show to Jon. He takes a deep breath, trying to wrestle his mind back from where it’s running in circles and screaming. 

He can do this. He just has to stay calm. And maybe, if he can finally show something to Jon, then he might be able to get this sudden desire for external attention out of his system. Probably. Hopefully. He’s almost completely certain it won’t totally backfire.

* * *

And so it goes. 

* * *

Some days are good: Jon manages to stay in the present where Martin’s future romantic prospects can’t upset him, and doesn’t let the persistent, unnatural hunger get to him. Some days are bad: Jon has to hide himself away for more bouts of ridiculous self-pity; Martin sits propped up listlessly in his bed, cold all over, and whispers that he’s scared he’s drifting away again, while Jon flutters uselessly, petrified that one wrong word will doom him; they both wake, screaming, from nightmares. Some days aren’t particularly good or bad: Martin will be out walking, and Jon will miss him from across the hills; he’ll come back to the cabin, and Jon will miss him from across the room; they’ll go to bed, and Jon will miss him from across the hallway, wishing that he hadn’t made such a spectacular mess of things, that he could invite himself into the comfort of Martin’s arms whenever he pleased, rather than carefully counting out his embraces, loath to overstep the bounds of Martin’s generosity.

Wishing, he thinks crossly as he digs a second pair of socks out of his suitcase in the dead of night, that he could sleep in a warm bed instead of one that’s too big for his poor circulation to heat effectively.

He curls up in a fetal position, knees pressed so tight to his chest that he knows he’d wake up with bruises if he were still entirely human. He and Martin have both taken to sleeping with their bedroom doors open; from this angle, he can’t see Martin’s head and shoulders, only the round shape of his body, curled up under the blankets just like Jon. Jon knows that Martin’s own view would be similar, if he were awake. 

But the lights are off, so Martin is probably asleep. And even if he were awake, he probably wouldn’t be able to see Jon in the gloom. Jon isn’t sure whether his uncanny night vision is a side benefit of choosing to become the Archivist, or an aftereffect of his trip to Ny-Ålesund; he hadn’t noticed it until several months after the latter, but hadn’t managed to pinpoint when it had changed in retrospect. In either case, using it to reassure himself that Martin is still there and hasn’t vanished into thin air is _probably_ not the intended use, but, well, Jon will take his comforts where he can get them.

But even as he breathes in time with Martin, letting the slow rhythm settle his mind, a familiar self-loathing begins to seep into his thoughts. He’s using his _monster powers_ to _spy on Martin while he sleeps._ That’s got to be a new low, even for him. Jon rolls over towards the wall, disgusted with himself, determined to reach unconsciousness without behaving like an utter creep.

He still can’t sleep, though. He misses Martin. (He always misses Martin.) He’s not actually any further away, but being unable to look at him makes the scant meters separating them feel like miles. 

_I have to learn to do this sometime,_ Jon thinks grimly, gripping his own shoulders tighter. _Someday he’ll be further then two open doors away._ As usual, the thought is accompanied by a surge of pain. 

Jon closes his eyes and waits for sleep to come. The faster he can drift off, the faster he can wake up and have the awful ordeal of his nightmares over with for another night. It’s almost a pity he won’t see Martin in his dreams. He thinks, idly, as he teeters on the edge of sleep, that it might be nice to dream about Martin, someday, if the two of them ever get out of this mess. If such a thing were even still possible for Jon.

It’s that thought that does it. That, and the sudden, awful realization that even if Martin were to get free of the Institute, he would still be trapped. Jon had _taken his statement,_ had done to Martin what he’d done to all those poor people whose only mistake had been being in the same room as Jon when he was _hungry,_ and now, breaking free of the Institute will doom Martin to being trapped in his flat with Prentiss at the door every single night for the rest of his life.

Christ. No wonder Martin doesn’t love him anymore. It’s a wonder anyone ever had in the first place.

* * *

Martin wakes with a panicked yelp, and spends a few seconds blinking and disoriented in utter darkness before remembering where he is. Right. Of _course_ Jon hadn’t just left him behind in the Lonely. They’re—friends, at the very least, even if they’re not anything else, and Jon wouldn’t just abandon him like that. He wishes his subconscious would get the memo, though. He’s been having the same nightmare all week.

He and Jon don’t keep the ancient lamps on at night, and there aren’t any other buildings near, so the only light is from the night sky. It must be near a new moon, too. When he and Jon had stepped out of the Lonely and onto the streets of London, the moon had been full in the sky above them, bright even amid all the light pollution, and it’s been about two weeks since then. So, although he knows that Jon is lying only a short distance away, he can’t actually see him. 

Which is unfortunate. Martin makes a point of going to bed early, partially because it encourages Jon to actually sleep, but also because it means it’s usually still light enough that he can just barely make out the small lump of Jon’s body under the covers in the other room. If he can’t see that Jon is still there while he drifts off, the dreams are worse. He doesn’t always have nightmares again after waking in the middle of the night, but when he does, they tend to be the worst of the bunch. 

It’s too cold to get out of bed, but Martin stretches under the covers before curling up again. He can’t see Jon, but sometimes it helps to listen to his breathing. Not always—Jon had mentioned once that he doesn’t really _need_ to breathe anymore, and sometimes his room is dead silent at night—but Martin’s found that focusing on his own breaths can also be soothing.

In, hold for a moment, out. Martin can feel his heartbeat slowing in response, finally settling into something approaching normal after his nightmare. He focuses on quieting himself as much as possible, and strains his ears for the faintest hint of noise from the next room.

For a few minutes, there’s nothing. But when Martin has just about resigned himself to falling asleep to silence again, he hears a faint noise, like a hiccup, and frowns sleepily. There’s another long pause, then a cascade of tiny exhales. 

Martin puzzles over the sounds for a moment, and then ice trickles down his spine. He switches on his bedside lamp, shielding his eyes from the sudden brilliance. The noises stop instantly, and through the open doorway, Martin can see the bundle of blankets that is Jon twitch. 

Even through his thickest pair of socks, the floor is cold enough to hurt. Martin ignores it as he pads, shivering slightly, to Jon’s doorway.

“Jon?” he calls out softly. The blankets don’t move. “Jon, I thought I heard—were you crying?”

“No,” says Jon, in a clogged and tear-choked voice. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You sound—”

“I’m _fine,”_ says Jon, more forcefully. “Just a—just a nightmare. Please leave me alone.” The blanket lump contracts in on itself even more, and Jon adds in a gentler tone, “Go back to sleep.”

Martin’s stomach drops into his feet. “Jon—”

“Please,” says Jon, oblivious to Martin’s sudden worry. “I’ll be fine, I promise—”

“No, Jon, what’s that on your pillow?”

“What?” Jon flinches upright immediately, scooting away from the head of the bed. Without his hair in the way, both of them can clearly see the rusty red streaks along the bottom edge of the pillowcase.

Martin’s stomach churns. “Jon, are you _hurt?”_ Involuntarily, he takes a step into the room.

“I don’t… think so?” says Jon, sounding baffled. He lets the blankets drop from his shoulders, and Martin gasps softly at the blood staining the loose, stretched-out back neckline of his sleep shirt. There’s a set of four deep, evenly-spaced scratches on each of his shoulders, already mostly scabbed over, right where his hands had been resting. The tips of his fingernails are stained red-brown as well. “Oh.”

“Did you do that in your _sleep?”_ asks Martin. Is it possible that one of the Institute’s many enemies has figured out how to attack them via dreams? Distantly, Martin realizes that he’s panicking. He doesn’t know what to do with his own hands. The sight of the blood is turning his stomach, and he wants to take the soiled shirt and linens and wash them, but there aren’t spare blankets and he can’t exactly undress Jon without making things _supremely_ awkward. He wants to take Jon’s hands so that he can’t scratch himself up even more, but that would probably spread the blood around even more. Plus, it would still be awkward to suddenly go up and hold Jon’s hands, even with the excuse. And besides, he doesn’t even know why Jon is hurt. “What happened?”

Jon mumbles something.

“What?”

“I wasn’t asleep, I just—didn’t notice what I was doing,” says Jon. He goes to fold his hands contritely in his lap, but then grimaces and holds them away from his body. “Damn. The linens, I didn’t mean to—to dirty them up so soon after you washed them. I can—”

“Jon, I don’t _care_ about the _bloody linens!_ Are _you_ all right?”

Jon, perplexingly, snorts. “I’m all right, I think,” he says hastily, before Martin can freak out any further. “I just—the bloody linens.”

Martin stares at him blankly until the words connect in his mind, and then he shakes his head, half exasperated, half still afraid. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Jon’s face falls slightly. “I don’t think so,” he says, stretching experimentally. “I was just—I was cold, and I don’t always… notice, anymore, when I get minor injuries like this.” He sighs and begins untangling his legs from the covers. “They don’t bother me as much as they used to.”

“I thought you said they still hurt,” says Martin, unable to help an accusatory note from creeping into his voice.

“They do,” says Jon, wincing as his feet touch the cold floor. “But I have… sort of a lot of aches and pains, nowadays? So little things like this don’t always seem, well, important.”

Martin swallows back sudden tears at the resignation in his voice. The last thing Jon needs is to have to deal with Martin crying at him when he’s already tired and in pain. “Can I help you clean up?” he asks.

“You don’t have to,” Jon says hastily.

“Please?” says Martin. “It’s just—it’s going to be hard for you to see everything, let alone reach it without pulling on—on those. Besides, I _want_ to help.” 

“All right,” says Jon, and allows Martin to herd him into the bathroom and sit him down on the lip of the antique bathtub. Martin helps him remove the stained shirt, and sets it aside. The scratches are already mostly closed, so it’s hard to tell how bad they were; Martin is forced to admit to himself that Jon’s spooky healing does seem to come in handy sometimes (the fact that it created this particular mess notwithstanding.) He dampens a washcloth as soon as the water heats up enough, and gets to work. 

Jon is quiet and very still while Martin wipes off the blood. Martin hopes he doesn’t mind how much Martin has to touch him for this; mindful of how sparing Jon has been with touch since they arrived in the cabin, he tries to stay as clinical as possible. It’s awful that he should be enjoying this—Jon is _hurt—_ but Jon’s chilled, goosebumped skin feels so good under his hands that it’s nearly painful. It’s only with great difficulty that he retreats enough to allow Jon to wash his own hands in the sink, rather than taking the opportunity to dab them off with the washcloth as well. 

“Thank you,” says Jon quietly, as Martin fills the sink with cold water and puts the dirty shirt in to soak. 

“Of course,” says Martin, with a halfhearted smile. Then he sighs. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about the sheets.”

“We can just use the spares.”

“The spares are already on your bed, Jon.”

“So?”

“So, it’ll leave you with even fewer blankets, at least until we get another chance to do laundry,” says Martin.

“I’ll be fine,” says Jon stubbornly.

Martin just raises his eyebrows at him. Now that the initial panic is mostly out of his system, Jon’s stubbornness is back to being frustratingly endearing, rather than just frustrating.

“I won’t scratch myself again,” says Jon seriously. “I promise.”

“You’re right, you won’t,” says Martin. “Because you’re going to take one of the quilts.”

“I am _not,”_ says Jon, affronted. “You shouldn’t have to be cold just because _I_ was careless.”

“I’ll be fine,” says Martin. 

Jon’s eyes narrow. “Are you sure you wouldn’t—” He cuts himself off and runs a hand through his hair. (Martin tries unsuccessfully not to wonder what it would feel like to run his own hand through Jon’s hair.) “I know it would probably be—awkward,” he says. “But—I just thought—if _you_ don’t mind, we could… share space? For a little while?” He coughs, gaze sliding to the floor. “I know you don’t—we don’t have to touch, or even share blankets, or anything. But it would probably be warmer if we were at least—nearby. Right?” He glances up, looking surprisingly fragile. 

“Well—yeah, that probably would help,” says Martin cautiously. “But Jon, you don’t have to—”

“I _want_ to,” says Jon, expression intense. Then his eyes widen and a flush steals across his face. “Sorry, I just mean—I meant it would be easier, I—sorry. I’ll drop it.”

Martin feels as though he’s missed a step and lost his balance. “It’s all right with me,” he says, puzzled. “As long as you’re fine with that, I mean. Unless you… changed your mind?”

“I didn’t mean to—to make it weird,” Jon tells the floor, eyes closed, still blushing. “I know you don’t—you don’t want that from me.”

 _What?_ “What?” says Martin.

To Martin’s horror, Jon sniffles, and when he speaks, his voice is wobbly. “I know you’re not interested—shit. I should—I should go.”

Jon tries to push past Martin to the door of the bathroom, and before Martin can think better of it, he reaches out and catches Jon’s hand. Jon freezes, and Martin tries to drop his hand, but he doesn’t let go. “Jon, what’s going on? Go where? Did I say something?”

Jon shakes his head. “No,” he rasps. “I just—you shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“With _what?”_ Martin practically begs him, deeply concerned, still perplexed.

“With _me,”_ Jon mutters bitterly. And with that, he lets go of Martin’s hand and vanishes into the dark depths of the cabin.

* * *

Martin doesn’t follow him, which Jon is grateful for. He curls up on the end of the sofa and shivers, head throbbing with exhaustion and embarrassment. _Christ,_ he needs to learn to keep his damn mouth shut. What a mess. He catches himself starting to grab at his shoulders again, and transfers his hands safely to the sofa cushions. He doesn’t want to put that look on Martin’s face ever again.

Distantly, Jon can hear Martin shuffling around at the end of the tiny hallway, where the doors to the two bedrooms are. Maybe he’ll go back to sleep. Maybe he’ll forget this whole humiliating encounter even happened. 

Or maybe he didn’t know until just now how utterly head-over-heels Jon is for him. It’s not like they ever really discussed it, and while Jon is sure the _nature_ of how he feels is blatantly obvious, Martin might not have realized just how far gone he is. Maybe he thought Jon was interested in him, but hadn’t realized that he was well past the initial infatuation and into the planning-the-rest-of-their-lives phase. 

Maybe, now that he knows, he’ll put even more distance between them. Maybe the scraps of affection that have been keeping Jon sane for the past two weeks will dry up and he’ll have _nothing._

Well. There’s the one and only good thing left in Jon’s life, gone up in smoke. _Good job,_ he tells himself. _Absolutely spectacular show. It’s not like you had literally anything else left to lose._

He’s just about settled in, ready to mope the rest of the night away alone on the sofa, when the lamp in the next room switches on. Jon stares with wide eyes as Martin approaches, wrapped in one of the blankets from his bed, the quilt he’d threatened to foist on Jon gathered up in one hand. Jon continues staring as Martin sits down next to him and begins delicately tucking the quilt around him.

It’s not until Martin settles back against the cushions and pulls his own blanket tighter that Jon finds his voice again. “What are you doing?” he asks hoarsely.

“You said you were cold,” says Martin, as though that explained everything. Jon just stares at him, once again too lost for words, and Martin sighs. “I’m starting to think that I’ve been mistaken about a few things.”

“Mistaken?”

“I thought,” says Martin, “that I was all right with the fact that you don’t want the same things I do. I thought I could just—just brush it off and get on with my life, that it wasn’t a big deal. But it _is._ And—and maybe you and I _don’t_ want the same things, and if that’s true, then—then I’ll get over it somehow. But first I’m going to be proper heartbroken over it, and not try and pretend I’m not.” He takes a deep breath. Jon, unable to form words, just keeps staring. “And I’m also starting to think I was wrong about you not wanting—well. Me. I was so sure that _you_ were the one who was putting up with—with _my_ messy, unwanted feelings. But the way you were talking, just now… I was wrong, wasn’t I? You were thinking the same thing I was.”

“What are you saying?” Jon whispers.

“I love you,” says Martin. He shifts in his seat and swallows. “I thought—this whole time, I thought you _knew._ I thought it was obvious.”

“But you said—” Jon’s throat aches. He coughs to clear it. “You said you really _loved_ me. _Loved._ Not—not—”

“But I followed you out,” Martin says softly. “Did you really think I would have been able to leave that place, if I didn’t still care?”

“I thought it was me,” Jon mumbles. “I figured—it was enough that someone, that _I,_ loved you. As long as you knew that—and as long as you still thought of me as a, a friend, at least—I thought that’s all it would take. I didn’t—I wasn’t sure you’d still want me, after everything I’d done. In fact, I was sure you _wouldn’t.”_

“Everything you’d _done?”_ says Martin, eyes gleaming wetly in the lamp-light. “Jon. I was already in love with you _before_ you walked straight into—into the closest thing there is to _literal hell—_ to wager your own life on the chance you could save mine.” He laughs gently, barely above a breath. “There’s really not a whole lot you could do that would make me stop wanting you.”

There’s a strange roaring in Jon’s ears, and his pulse thunders in his chest. If not for the fact that his dreams have been exactly the same every single night for over a year, he’d think he was dreaming. He’s still not entirely convinced he’s _not._

Martin is saying something. Jon forces himself to tune back in.

“Was I mistaken?” he asks anxiously. “Do… do you…?”

“If you’re asking if I love you, the answer is yes,” Jon chokes out. The residual panic, the lingering conviction that admitting the truth will ruin everything, makes every word a struggle. He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling yet more tears drip down his face.

Something deliciously warm brushes against his cheek. Jon opens his eyes to see that Martin has freed one arm from his blanket cocoon and is stroking the tears from Jon’s cheek with his thumb. He’s smiling through his own tears. “Well, that’s good, then,” he says. “Would be unfortunate if I said all that for nothing.”

Even afterwards, Jon isn’t sure whether what followed was laughter or more crying. Not that it really matters, he reflects, safely wrapped up in Martin’s arms, a kiss lingering on each eyelid and warmth flooding all the way to his toes. What really matters is that for the first time, the very first time since he woke up to find that everything had gone wrong, Martin is right here, and Jon doesn’t miss him any longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: moderate to severe negative self talk, very lightly implied/blink-and-you'll-miss-it internalized homophobia/fatphobia, semi-accidental self harm
> 
> Comments are love! Tell me what you think :)


	2. Warming Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after, and the days that follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote the first part of this, I envisioned it as a stand-alone story, and I think it’s basically self-contained and complete as-is. However!! I also wanted to tie up some loose ends and add some fluff to balance out the angst, and what I ended up with didn’t feel like it had enough of an arc to be a stand-alone work. So here’s a bonus fluff(/who-am-i-kidding-there’s-a-lot-of-angst-in-here-too) chapter! Enjoy.
> 
> Thanks to [Bloodsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsbane) for beta reading! Also, shout-out to shinyopals for the comment which got me excited enough to actually finish this, lol.
> 
> Content warnings at the end.

When Martin wakes up the next morning, his entire back is cold. It only takes a few moments of blinking confusedly at the ceiling and fumbling around in the bed to realize why: Jon, who is curled up against his chest, has managed to steal most of the blankets. Only the top of his head pokes out of his messy cocoon.

 _Right,_ Martin thinks to himself. _So that actually happened, then._

After a minute or two of staring dopily at Jon’s hair, though, Martin realizes that he’s still cold. Tugging gently on the blankets does nothing. Tugging firmly makes Jon hold on even tighter. Jon would probably offer to share if he were awake, but his sleep was interrupted last night, and Martin happens to know that he hasn’t been sleeping well regardless of late. 

Martin runs a hand through his hair. The previous night had been—a revelation, and a relief, and a sorely-needed release of tension between them. But Jon’s injury, and the breakdown that had followed it, had tired them both out. There hadn’t actually been much in the way of _talking,_ not after they’d straightened out their—frankly ridiculous, in hindsight—misunderstanding. 

Martin knows that Jon _probably_ won’t get upset if Martin gently wakes him and takes the covers back, and _probably_ won’t get upset if Martin decides not to wake him after all, and just gently wrestles the blankets back into a semblance of order. He probably won’t even be upset if Martin reaches over and strokes his fingers through Jon’s hair like he’s so tempted to do. But Martin doesn’t _know._ And it’s been less than twelve hours since he realized he could actually have this; he doesn’t want to do anything that could possibly jeopardize it.

Jon seems fairly deeply asleep still, so Martin dresses quickly and heads into the tiny kitchen, shivering in the chill, to get started on breakfast. He’s tended to cook in the mornings more often than not since they got here; Jon, for all that he used to arrive at the Institute nearly an hour before anyone else, turns out to be emphatically _not_ a morning person, and sleeps late now that he doesn’t have an office to drag himself to.

Martin creeps back into his—their?—bedroom no fewer than three times while he waits for the oatmeal to be done; he’d hate for Jon to wake alone and worry that Martin had changed his mind from their talk the previous night. Luckily, the third time he pokes his head through the doorway, Jon is just beginning to stir. A rush of fizzy affection washes through Martin at the sight of Jon, still half asleep, trying confusedly to wriggle his way out of the blankets he’d managed to entwine himself in during the night.

Martin crosses the room to sit down on the other side of the bed. “Good morning, Jon.”

“Martin?” Jon mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

“Mmm-hmmm,” says Martin. He reaches out to take one of Jon’s hands in his, but then reconsiders and puts it down on the mattress next to Jon’s hand instead.

Jon glances at it, then up at his face, and then reaches up to touch his own shoulder, frowning, still barely awake. “Did I… did we… talk? Last night?”

“We did,” says Martin. “And I, uh, I meant every word I said. I—I love you.” His hand twitches, aching to reach up and take Jon’s, but he holds still. “Just in case you—in case you weren’t sure,” he adds, feeling very foolish.

“Oh,” says Jon, very quietly. He reaches down and gently puts his hand in Martin’s, then suddenly, anxiously, looks up, as if not sure he’s allowed to touch, and Martin doesn’t feel so foolish after all. He holds his other arm out, and Jon flings himself eagerly into the offered embrace. “I love you too,” Jon says, his voice muffled by Martin’s shoulder.

The fizzy rush comes back with a vengeance, and it’s all Martin can do not to squeeze Jon against him as tightly as he can. He wants to cling, wants to _use_ the restless energy that makes his arms tremble from the effort of holding back his strength. But Jon is so thin, so worryingly frail, and besides, he’s still being almost painfully gentle, the way he has been with every touch since he pulled Martin out of the fog. 

So instead, Martin reaches one unsteady hand up to the back of Jon’s head, then hesitates. He can’t think of any way to ask that’s not at least a little bit awkward, so he settles for being forthright: “Can I touch your hair?”

“Mmm? Oh. Yes, of course.”

Jon’s hair isn’t _quite_ as soft as it had looked earlier; it’s mussed from sleep, and the silvery-gray streaks are more wiry than Martin would have thought. It’s not really enough to settle the buzzing in his bones, but it’s _miles_ better than yesterday.

* * *

Martin leads Jon to the kitchen by the hand, but drops it once Jon is settled at the rough wooden table in order to put the finishing touches on their breakfast. Jon rubs his hands together while he waits, feeling bereft. 

Before last night, the longing would have already set in by now, and Jon would be struggling to conceal the fact that he missed Martin even while looking straight at him, even while they exchanged friendly conversation over the meal. Today, Jon feels… unmoored. Miles better than yesterday, sure, but still lost. He’s already had one hug this morning, and enough handholding to probably count as another one, but Martin had initiated both of those. Plus, maybe now that Martin loves him back—or rather, that Jon _knows_ that Martin loves him back—it’ll be okay for Jon to touch him more often.

It’s not like his previous quota had been based on anything that Martin had said, exactly. It’s more that Jon had known that if he’d let himself reach out and take whatever he wanted, _whenever_ he wanted, he would have been exposed as not only bothersome but also grasping and avaricious; his bottomless greed for unearned warmth, comfort, even just _attention_ would be on full and ugly display. He’d needed guidelines in order to stop himself from taking and taking and _taking,_ and in the absence of clear external directives, he’d made some up. 

He’d been allowed to initiate three hugs (or equivalent gestures of affection) per day, and no more than two either before or after noon. Gentle touch only; no pressing his sharp, ungainly appendages into Martin’s soft belly or back. Absolutely no kisses, to his face or anywhere else. Anything initiated by Martin didn’t count towards the total—unless, of course, Jon had accidentally tricked him into offering, which ended up being about a third of the time. He’d debated additional consequences with himself, but it had turned out that deducting any extra indulgence from the following day’s allowance had been more than enough incentive to behave.

But now they’re—together? Probably? And people generally allow more affection from partners than from friends. Jon thinks back to when he and Georgie used to date. He hadn’t had a strict quota back then—he hadn’t been desperate enough, or monstrous enough, to need the security of strict rules—so it’s hard to judge how many times per day he’d reached out to her. Five times? Seven? Eight? A dozen? He and Georgie had never cohabited, so his calculations will no doubt be off, just by virtue of the different amounts of time involved. But maybe that doesn’t matter? Maybe the volume of affection should be the same, and he should just spread it out more. 

He’s brought out of his musing by the sound of a bowl being placed on the table in front of him. Oatmeal, as Martin had said, but as per usual, it’s rather fancier than anything Jon would have fixed for himself. A cluster of golden sultanas sits in the center of the bowl, ringed by a sprinkle of brown sugar and dusted on top with cinnamon. In the middle of the table, Martin sets the glass sugar bowl and porcelain pitcher from the cabin’s mismatched tea service; the former is half full of brown sugar, the latter contains the last of the cream.

“Help yourself,” says Martin. “I know you like it sweet, but I didn’t want to go overboard, or let it get cold, so I figured, um, best leave it to you.”

“Thank you,” says Jon softly. Martin blushes harder and mumbles something bashful that Jon can’t quite make out.

Every morning for the past two weeks, they’ve sat across from each other at breakfast. But this time, Martin drags his chair halfway around the table to sit at Jon’s left side. It’s harder for Jon to sneak glances at Martin like this, but he’s also acutely aware of the warmth of Martin’s body, separated from him by barely a hand’s breadth. Once or twice, Jon considers leaning over and pressing his cheek against Martin’s shoulder, but the still-unanswered question of how much is too much makes him keep his distance.

For a few minutes, it’s quiet; only the clinking of dishes, and the faint rustling of grass and trees in the wind outside. They’re both quiet in the mornings, more often than not. It takes Jon a long time to wake up, and given the choice between being cranky and being withdrawn, he’s found he prefers the second option of late. Martin sometimes carries on three-quarters of a conversation with him, but today he seems shy. Jon casts about for a topic of conversation as he finishes his breakfast. It’s quite good. He tells Martin so.

“It’s really nothing much,” says Martin, ducking his head. “I would have done something fancier, except I woke up early and I didn’t want it to get cold.”

“It’s not nothing,” says Jon, and reaches out, on impulse, to take Martin’s hand. Unfortunately, this means that when he abruptly hesitates, unable to commit to the action while he’s still unsure of the rules, Martin is looking straight at him. And so, when Jon’s hand falls limply back to the table, Martin’s face falls with it.

Jon recognizes Martin’s disappointment, and feels his own face start to contort into—something. Guilt, maybe? But Martin is still looking at him, so he can see that Jon saw, and Jon can see that too, and Martin can see _that,_ and the whole thing is suddenly _entirely_ too many layers deep, and Jon is rapidly losing any chance he had at figuring out how Martin is going to react to any of it.

“Let me just—” says Martin, starting to gather up the dishes, but Jon is suddenly convinced that if he doesn’t head off this misunderstanding _right now,_ they’ll never recover from it.

“I don’t know how much I can—how much I can take,” Jon blurts out.

Martin pauses. “What do you mean? Like—oh, oh _no,_ was last night too much? You just—I thought—”

Jon hastens to correct him. “No, that’s not what I meant, I—” He swallows. “I mean, I don’t know what _you_ want. I don’t—I’m not _good_ at this. I don’t want to bother you, or be too—too clingy, or—” _A burden,_ he thinks, but can’t make himself say the words. “I don’t _like_ to be annoying. I need to know where the—where the line is.”

“You’re not—Jon, it’s not _annoying_ to want to hold hands,” says Martin, looking aghast. Then he glances aside, thinking, before adding, “Or to want hugs, or to not want to sleep alone. There’s no such _thing_ as too clingy.”

“There are plenty of people who would disagree with you,” Jon mutters.

“Well, I’m not _them,”_ says Martin, and Jon hunches his shoulders at the rebuke in his tone. Martin’s voice immediately softens. “I’m sorry. I’m not upset with you, or—or annoyed. It’s just that—you could _never_ be too much. All right? Never.”

“You say that _now.”_

Martin draws a sharp breath, as though in preparation for a sigh, but he lets it out slowly, and when he speaks, his voice is patient and gentle. “What is it, then? What do you want, that you think is so bothersome? Please, Jon, I don’t understand.”

“I want to touch you all the time,” Jon blurts out, and then regrets it immediately when a blush steals across Martin’s face. “Not like—nothing untoward! It’s just that I—I miss you. All the time. Even when you’re a foot away, I miss you.” He looks down at his hands where they’re clasped in his lap.

Martin’s hand settles warm and heavy on Jon’s shoulder, and the vicious animal hunger under Jon’s skin settles down a bit. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” Jon whispers.

“How about this?” Martin asks, sliding his hand down Jon’s arm and gently lacing their fingers together.

Jon nods, not trusting his voice.

“I don’t _mind_ this, Jon,” says Martin, with a sad little smile. “I’m not bothered by it. I _like_ it. I like holding your hand, I like hugging you, I—I like being close to you.”

“But it’s _all the time,”_ says Jon. “And—you shouldn’t have to make—to make _concessions_ for me.”

“That’s not what I’m—all right. Why? Why shouldn’t I?” asks Martin.

“Because I’m a _monster,”_ says Jon. Scalding-hot tears begin dripping down his face, and he swipes angrily at them with his free hand. “I should be—I should be grateful that you’re willing to be around me, let alone—let alone _love_ me. I shouldn’t always want more.”

“Oh, _Jon.”_ Martin reaches up and catches his other hand. 

“When you told me that you—when you _told_ me,” says Jon, “I thought I’d stop missing you. And I did, but only until you let go again.” He sniffles hard. His head hurts. “Every time I try to stop taking things from people, it _hurts._ But I—I don’t want to hurt _you._ So I need to know how much I can take before it’s too much. Please.” He closes his eyes, only to open them with a surprised squawk when Martin scoops him out of his chair and deposits him in his lap.

“You’re not _hurting_ me,” says Martin fiercely. “I don’t know where you got the idea that my touching you, or, or paying attention to you, is the same thing as you hurting me, but it’s _not true._ I _want_ you to want me, all right? If there’s something you want that I don’t like, or that I’m—not in the mood for, or something, I’ll tell you, but I’m not going to be _upset_ with you. I promise.”

“I don’t want to ask for anything you don’t want to give,” says Jon into Martin’s shirt. The thought alone makes his stomach churn with terror. 

“Because you think I’ll be upset?”

Jon shrugs. “Or that you’d give it to me anyway. Either because I—” He swallows. “Because I tricked you into thinking I needed it, or because you couldn’t refuse.”

Martin’s hand rubs a slow, steady circle in the center of Jon’s back. “Tricked me, how?”

“Made you think I really _needed_ something, when really I’d be fine if I just—stopped moping so much,” says Jon.

The hand on his back pauses before continuing in its pattern. “When do you think you’ve done that?”

“I’m doing it right now,” says Jon, shame reducing his voice to a thready whisper.

Jon isn’t sure what he’d expected. He didn’t think Martin would be angry, exactly. Disappointed, maybe, or frustrated at Jon making everything more complicated than it needed to be. He’d hoped, secretly, ashamedly, that Martin would reassure him again that he doesn’t mind, that he still likes Jon even despite the ridiculous neediness. He hadn’t expected Martin to say, very seriously, “I don’t think you are, actually.”

“W— _what?”_ Jon pulls back so he can look Martin in the face. He’s not smiling or winking, so it probably wasn’t a joke, but—it makes no _sense._ “But I’m—what do you _mean?”_

“Well—leaving aside the fact that I rather like holding onto you—I think you need more than you think you do,” says Martin, face still serious. “I could be wrong, of course. It’s not like I have the best track record for figuring out what you’re really thinking.” There—a ghost of a smile, gone as quickly as it had arrived. He still doesn’t seem to be joking, though. “But… I mean, it doesn’t sound like you’re deliberately trying to—to _deceive_ me about what you need. It seems more like you don’t want to admit that you _do_ need—whatever it is you think you’ve been taking from me.”

Jon scoffs, disbelieving. “I don’t _need_ —hugs, or, or, or for you to—to flatter me. It’s nice!” he adds, hurriedly, realizing after a moment how that had sounded. “I _like_ it. But I don’t _need_ it.”

“You said it hurt, to stop taking what you wanted,” says Martin, still so patient. Far more patient than Jon deserves. “Does it hurt when you go too long between hugs, or when it’s been a while since someone last said something nice to you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“If it hurts when you don’t have it, then you need it,” says Martin firmly.

“By that logic, I _need_ live statements,” Jon mutters.

“Yes, because you _do,”_ says Martin.

“I do _not!”_

“Just because you need them, doesn’t mean you’re going to _take_ them,” says Martin hastily. “Live ones, at least. I don’t think you’re going to—to fall off the wagon, so to speak. But you told me, before the Unknowing, that it made you tired and sick to go too long between reading them. And of course it’s not _remotely_ the same thing, but the same principle applies, right?” Martin cups Jon’s cheek in one hand, and Jon is helpless to stop himself from leaning into the touch, catlike. _“Please,_ Jon,” says Martin. “If you want to deny yourself comfort, I… I suppose I can’t _really_ stop you, much as I’d like to. But don’t do it because of me. Please.”

Jon takes a shuddering breath. “I… I’ll try? If you tell me what I—what I can and can’t do, then I’ll try.”

“I mean, I’d probably be thrilled at pretty much anything, coming from you,” says Martin, but then he catches sight of the expression on Jon’s face and loses some of his levity. “Um. Hugging is fine, obviously. Holding hands is fine. Really, I—I swear I’m not saying this to frustrate you on purpose, but I can’t really think of anything I’d want to tell you not to do.”

“I’m guessing you wouldn’t want me to do anything that would hurt?” says Jon, only moderately sarcastic. He’s relieved to find that his crawling anxiety is already starting to recede, corralled into submission by the security of certainty.

“Oh! Yes. Or—that’s correct, I don’t want that. Hmmm.” Martin pauses, thinking. “I suppose… I suppose I’d rather not have you spring anything… sexual, on me? Not without talking it over first, anyway.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” says Jon, with a weak chuckle. “Though, that’s a conversation we could certainly have. Just to—to know where we each stand?”

“Sure,” says Martin. “Though not now, I think? Maybe once we’ve… gotten used to each other more?” Jon nods. “All right. Anything else?”

“How often?” Jon asks, trying not to sound overly hopeful.

“As often as you want,” says Martin. Then, “No, really, I mean it. Even if it _is_ all the time. _Especially_ if it’s all the time.”

Jon frowns, but moves on to the next important point. “What about kissing?” he asks.

Martin flushes all the way to the ears. “I—I’d like that,” he manages to stutter out. “If you wanted to.”

Jon leans up and presses his lips experimentally against Martin’s cheek. It’s very warm. 

When he pulls back, Martin is staring at him, expression soft. “Can I?” he asks, and at Jon’s nod, he kisses the top of Jon’s head. He doesn’t pull back afterwards, just rests his cheek there with a sigh and a “Thank you.”

There’s more to discuss, of course; Jon is quite certain that even despite his protestations to the contrary, Martin doesn’t quite know what he’s getting into by allowing Jon free rein. But it’s a good start, at least, and he’s very comfortable at the moment, so he lets the conversation rest.

* * *

When the two of them had arrived at the cabin, it hadn’t taken long for them to both get bored. There’s a small bookshelf in the front room, stocked with books that Martin’s pretty sure came from the same shelf in the fiction section of some secondhand book store or charity shop; there’s a surprising variety of genres, but all the authors’ names start with a letter between C and G. 

Jon had read two books on the first day, three on the second, and one on the third, before proclaiming that the rest were too similar to things he’d read before and he was done with the lot. Martin has been working his way through at a more reasonable pace, but he can only sit still with his nose in a book for so long; the sudden change from anxious urgency to monotonous inaction is grating on him. And aside from the books, there’s really not much else to do.

Except talking, that is. But with the air cleared—or clearer, at least—Martin has found that he really, _really_ likes listening to Jon talk.

“But the _main_ problem with one’s-complement numbers is that there are two different ways of representing zero,” Jon continues. “Which leads to a bit of a mess when doing arithmetic, as you might imagine.”

“That does sound like a mess,” Martin offers, mildly lost but inordinately fond. Absentmindedly, he reaches for his water glass. 

Jon takes a breath to continue, but his gaze catches on Martin’s outstretched hand, and suddenly all the ease is gone from his expression and posture.

“Jon?”

Jon shakes his head, hard enough that Martin winces sympathetically, sure he’s just given himself a headache. “Sorry. Distracted. Um. Arithmetic.” He doesn’t pick up where he left off, though; instead, he stays quiet, staring at nothing, still tense. 

Martin waits a few seconds, but when it becomes clear that Jon isn’t about to speak anytime soon, he lightly rests a hand on Jon’s shoulder. Jon twitches, but doesn’t pull away.

“Are you all right?” asks Martin.

“Yes,” says Jon, much too quickly.

“Are you _sure?”_ It’s impossible to keep the skepticism out of his voice entirely, but Martin does his best to keep his tone gentle, at least.

Jon fidgets. “It’s stupid,” he says, at length.

Martin hums thoughtfully. “I bet it’s not, though,” he says.

Jon groans. “But it _is._ It’s—I keep imagining that you’re wearing a—a ring.”

Martin frowns. He’s not hurt by the implication, if only because he’s not sure what the implication _is._ “And that’s a—a bad thing?”

“Oh—no, no, of course not!” Jon hastens to add. “I just—Christ, this is embarrassing. I’ve been having a recurring… daydream isn’t the right word. I made the mistake of imagining you inviting me to your wedding, once, and I haven’t been able to shake the idea since.” Jon peeps up at Martin’s puzzled, not-quite-upset face, and then looks away again. “Inviting me as a _guest,_ you see.”

“Oh. Oh, _Jon.”_

“I told you it was stupid,” says Jon, chin to his chest.

“S’not stupid,” says Martin, draping an arm around Jon’s narrow shoulders. 

Despite his apparent embarrassment, Jon plasters himself against Martin’s side in response. “I knew it was ridiculous,” he tells Martin’s shoulder. “But I couldn’t make myself stop. And—” He cuts himself off suddenly and wraps his arms around his own skinny chest.

On a hunch, Martin pulls Jon into a tight, lingering embrace. This time, Jon doesn’t even startle at the sudden pressure, just relaxes right into it. “And?” Martin asks.

There’s a pause. Martin pushes down the urge to fill the silence; he needs to allow Jon to put words to his thoughts. “I told myself it was good practice,” says Jon eventually. “Feeling upset about it. So that when it happened for real, I could—I don’t know. Act normal, instead of…”

Martin’s heart aches. “Is that what you’ve been doing, all those times you ducked out of a conversation?”

Jon nods. “Pathetic, I know.” There’s a curl of bitterness in his voice that Martin doesn’t like one bit.

“No,” says Martin emphatically. “Not at all.” 

Jon pulls back and eyes him suspiciously.

Martin sighs, feeling the awful blotchy color start to rise in his neck as he realizes what he’s about to say. “I wrote a lot of poetry—”

“That’s not—” Jon tries to interrupt. Before he can think better of it, Martin touches a finger to Jon’s lips in a shushing gesture. Jon stops talking, eyes crossing for a moment as he tries to track Martin’s hand, and Martin has to bite his lip not to laugh at the picture he makes.

“I wrote a lot of _very mushy_ poetry about—about someone who I thought would never see me as anything but a friend,” says Martin. “I know it’s not the same, but, well… I was probably practicing feeling sad, too, now that I think about it.”

“Making art is different from pointless self-flagellation,” Jon mumbles around Martin’s finger.

“Not always,” says Martin. “I mean, sure, point taken, they’re not exactly the same thing, but it’s not like I was trying to—to _deal_ with how I was feeling. But my point is—I’m hardly going to look down on you for… for wallowing, or for a bit of self-pity. It’s not like I haven’t been doing plenty of both, myself. And even if I hadn’t, I _still_ wouldn’t—wouldn’t make fun of you for it, or anything like that.”

Jon mumbles something that sounds a bit like “I love you, too,” against Martin’s shoulder, and they sit there for a few minutes in cozy silence before Jon picks up his head again. “The poetry, um. Was it about…?” He trails off and runs a hand through his hair, plainly embarrassed again.

Martin is sorely tempted to joke that no, it was about the _other_ love of his life, but Jon looks so nervous and self-conscious that he can’t bring himself to do it. “Yes, it was about you,” he says. His own voice sounds unbearably fond, and it’s such a relief to not have to try and moderate it anymore.

Jon, meanwhile, lapses back into silence for a minute, several expressions chasing each other across his face too quickly for Martin to pick them out. Finally, he asks, “Is _that_ why you wouldn’t show it to me?”

Now it’s Martin’s turn to be flustered. “N—well, yes, that’s part of it, I suppose, but, well—” A vivid mental image of Jon’s eagerness slowly giving way to disappointment as he flips through pages and pages of clumsy poetry in clumsier handwriting dances behind his eyes, mocking him. “I wasn’t joking when I said it wouldn’t compare well to… pretty much anything you would’ve read at university.”

“And _I_ wasn’t joking when I said I don’t care about that,” says Jon, obstinately sincere, and Martin falls a tiny bit more in love with him, if such a thing is possible. “...But you don’t have to show me if you don’t want to,” he adds, seeming reluctant.

“I do want to,” Martin decides. “I think I want a chance to edit a bit, first, though? I didn’t exactly write assuming anyone else would be reading anything I wrote. That is, if you don’t mind waiting.”

Jon sighs gustily. “Oh no,” he deadpans. “What a dreadful imposition, asking me to wait until your work is ready in order to read it. However will I cope.”

Martin snorts and squeezes his arm a little tighter around Jon’s waist. “Oh, shush,” he says, and Jon muffles a laugh against his shoulder. “And, um. If there’s anything I can do to help, if you start feeling like you want to go and hide again… you’ll let me know, right?”

“Just this is plenty,” says Jon. “Well. Actually.” He squirms away just long enough to snag the blanket folded on the opposite arm of the sofa, and then returns to his former spot with only the barest hint of the hesitation he’d had at the beginning of the week, shaking the blanket out over both of them.

Martin smiles to himself and gathers Jon up under his arm again. “Cozy enough for you?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Well then. I believe you were telling me… something about maths?”

“Not maths _exactly,”_ says Jon, his eagerness for the topic beginning to saturate his voice again. “It’s more to do with the representation of the numbers themselves than the way they’re used for calculation—”

Martin nods along, enjoying the attention and the closeness in equal measure. He’d quite like to get used to this, he finds himself thinking, and smiles privately to himself.

* * *

It takes a while for Martin to actually get around to sharing his poetry. Jon has never been a terribly patient person, but for this, he tries his best. He’d been curious about the contents of Martin’s little well-worn notebook since he’d first laid eyes on it, a few days after their arrival, but now that he knows it’s full of love poetry—about _him,_ of all people—the urge to peek is a constant and miserably frustrating itch. He isn’t going to give in, though; of all the stupid self-destructive choices he’s been offered over the past few years, this one at least is obvious enough that he can steer clear ahead of time rather than just regretting it in retrospect. 

True to his word, Martin doesn’t seem to mind Jon’s unceasing clinginess, which is a very pleasant surprise. Well—Jon supposes it’s not _entirely_ a surprise, not really; he hadn’t thought Martin had been lying, per se, when he’d said that he wouldn’t mind Jon wanting to be close to him all the time. But the realization that Martin really, truly hadn’t been overestimating his own endurance with regard to Jon’s desire for unearned attention comes as a bit of a shock. 

Luckily, this has the side benefit of diverting a great deal of Jon’s attention in return, which helps distract him from the allure of the notebook. When his attention isn’t thus diverted—when Martin is off in another room, or already asleep even though it’s not yet one in the morning, or even when he’s writing and hasn’t put a wall at his back—Jon turns to other distractions. First, he slogs through a few of the less derivative books left on the shelf. When those lose the last faint glimmers of their appeal, he tries his hand at re-creating from memory some of the simpler recipes from his brief baking obsession during university, to mixed success. Gardening turns out to involve a great deal of waiting in between the periods of activity, and thus fails to hold his attention for more than an hour or so per day; fixing up the cottage turns out to require upper body strength that he simply doesn’t have.

Jon even, secretly, attempts to write his own poetry—about Martin, of course. He lasts all of twenty minutes trying to insert line breaks into a handful of prose sentences in a way that makes them feel _artistic_ before he gives up in despair. He feels ridiculous. He doesn’t know how other people manage it.

But Martin clearly manages just fine, because he keeps on filling pages in that notebook of his, slowly but surely marching towards the back cover with a steady determination that makes Jon think guiltily about the pile of several dozen notebooks of various shapes and sizes that had once inhabited the drawer of the desk in his old flat before he’d lost his lease, none of which had ever had more than ten pages filled. 

It feels symbolic, somehow. Martin, for all of his nervousness and fretting, despite the miserable uncertainty of their long separation, is as steady and comforting a presence as the earth beneath Jon’s feet, or the passage of day into night into day again. Jon tries to return the favor, as best he can; Martin doesn’t seem to enjoy being fussed over as much as Jon does, but he does flush beautifully every time Jon says anything sweet to him, so Jon makes a habit out of murmured _I-love-you_ -s and spontaneous compliments. Martin will never capital-K _Know_ how much Jon adores him—which is a good thing, even if it sometimes makes Jon a little sad—so he’ll just have to settle for finding the least messy and imperfect way of communicating his feelings, just like everyone else.

The funny thing is, Martin has apparently been thinking along similar lines. Because on the day that Martin finally sits Jon down at the table and puts that notebook down in front of him, Jon understands the reason _why_ he does it. The words on the page are—well, even though he’s no connoisseur, he can still tell that the poem is a bit derivative, that it flirts with cliché, just like the work he’d dug out of Martin’s desk back in the depths of his paranoia. But despite Martin’s protestations, it couldn’t be less important how it compares to anything Jon’s read before. It’s about _him._ It’s _for_ him. It wouldn’t exist if not for the fact that Martin felt that the world was lacking a meandering comparison between—Jon squints at the paper again—between the universe at large and Jon’s face seen in a mirror, and had taken it upon himself to remedy the error.

“Jon?” Martin’s voice is high and tight, and when Jon looks up, he’s wringing his hands. “Are you—is it okay? You’re not—upset, are you?”

“No! No, I—” Jon rubs at his eyes, which have gotten annoyingly prickly. “Nobody’s ever written poetry about me before,” he tries to explain. “I didn’t expect it to—to affect me as much as it is.”

“Oh.” Martin relaxes, and a timid smile creeps onto his face. “Is it any good, then? Did you—did you like it?”

Jon stands up and wraps his arms around the back of Martin’s neck, fitting the crown of his head under Martin’s chin. “Of course I do. You wrote it.”

Martin snorts, though his arms come up to embrace Jon right back. “That’s hardly a mark of quality, you know. I’ve written plenty of rubbish.”

“Everyone writes rubbish sometimes. Besides, that’s not what I meant.”

“Oh? Then what _did_ you mean?”

Jon considers his words carefully. “It made me understand you better. Or, at least, I feel as though it did. Not that I was—that I was _mis_ understanding you before,” he hastens to add. “But, in the absence of actual mindreading, well… it felt like the next best thing.” It sounds ridiculous when he says it out loud. He hides his face in Martin’s chest.

But Martin’s hand gently cups the back of his head, not trying to make him move, just holding on. “That’s—very kind of you to say,” he says, sounding a bit choked up.

“It’s true.”

Martin _hmmms_ noncommittally and changes the subject. “Well. It’s nice to see that you’re feeling more comfortable.”

“Hmmm?”

“You didn’t hesitate before coming over here.” Martin’s arms tighten briefly, as if in demonstration. “It’s just nice to see, is all.”

“I suppose I didn’t,” says Jon. “...Thank you. For—for not making me guess about how you feel.”

Martin chuckles, though his voice is still wobbly. “I think I should say the same to you.”

Jon doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just nestles closer, wordless. After a while, though, his leg starts to ache from standing, and he settles back into his chair. He keeps hold of one of Martin’s hands, though.

His gaze falls back on the notebook, and Martin fidgets. “Did you—um. Did you want to read any more of them?”

Jon looks up so fast it makes his neck hurt. “Can I?”

Martin smiles, though he ducks his head trying to hide it. “I mean, that was the best one, but there are a few others you might like, since you liked that one…” He pulls the notebook toward him and starts flipping through it, one-handed. Jon hugs Martin’s other hand to his chest and waits with as much patience as he can muster.

He can scarcely believe he gets to have this. It still feels like a miracle. But it’s getting more comfortable all the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: moderate to severe negative self-talk, anxiety-induced secret rules.
> 
> Tell me your favorite line, if you like :)


End file.
